July 2012

So sad to hear that Maeve Binchy has died. She has been unwell for some time I gather and no new books have appeared for a few years. I have read all of them and enjoyed them thoroughly. I wrote about her some years back and I see no reason to change a word of what I said then:

"There are some authors one reads because they make you feel good, comforted and relaxed, ie - warm and fuzzy. Strangely, these books are seldom those that will be reviewed in the Guardian, the Times or the Independent and literary magazines or, if they do, will be mentioned somewhat slightingly.

I know full well that Maeve Binchy falls into this category. She is a hugely successful writer (I would say 'prolific' but I gather this is a dirty word in certain literary circles...) and all her books top the best seller lists and are sold worldwide. I have read all of them and I read them when I want a book that is not going to upset me, make me mad or bewildered because I don't understand what the author is getting at and I feel a tad dim. Believe me, this happens a lot.

All of Maeve's books have an Irish background, not surprisingly as she is Irish herself, and are based on family relationships and loves. Problems are solved and most endings are happy, though not all. This may makes them sound trite but they are not. I certainly don't get the feeling that Maeve views the world through rose tinted glasses, she is very alive to deceit and deception and human frailties, but as she writes about these subjects in a fluid easy readable style, I think reviewers view her writing as somewhat facile and, therefore, to be dismissed. This is most definitely not the case. She has an eagle eye and is most perceptive.

I have just finished reading Whitethorn Woods (which has been sitting since November on my bookstack so I am now going to cheat and make this one of my Bookstack Challenges!) and today is my last day at home before plunging back into the world of commute and stress tomorrow, so I felt this book would be perfect to calm me down prior to boarding the 7.18 am in the morning.

This story is set in the small town of Rossmore where a well dedicated to St Ann is situated. Though the local people set great store by this well and its miraculous and spiritual properties, others are not so sure, including the local curate who feels it is all superstition. A new bypass is being built and the road will go straight through Whitethorn Woods and the well. Local opinion is divided over this amongst those who wish to retain the well and others who will make huge sums of money selling their land to developers.

This book has 16 Chapters, but really they are a collection of loosely linked short stories, each one told by two protagonists from their point of view. These are not all set in Rossmore but everyone is linked in some way to this town and its fate. Lifelong friends who met on a Kibbutz in Israel visit the shrine to sort out their marriages; a wealthy American who comes back to his childhood town to build a clinic; a childless woman asking for a baby; another asking for a husband - they all have their own reasons for their visits"

In interviews and articles it seemed to me that Maeve was as warm hearted and as understanding as her characters and that there was a little of her in many of them. Booker prize winners are all very well, gritty hard hitting novels are all very well, murder and mayhem have their place, but Maeve had hers too and nobody should think that her books are saccharine or soft in any way. She knew what was what.

As the Booker longlist does the rounds, and 50 Shades of Grey and its grubby offspring take the place of Haribo at supermarket checkouts, there's never been a better time to have an opinion on books I haven't read. Bad books, good books, disappointments and classics – I could name a dozen in each of these categories that I've never got round to picking up, but about which I have formed a kind of aggregate opinion based on a complicated algorithm of prejudice and past reading.

As you all know I loathe the sponsors, the money men, the greed of the corporates involved in the Games, have made my feelings clear and wish the Games could proceed without any of these greedy money makers hanging on their coat tails, but it seems this is not possible.

So the Games are now here and no point in moaning any more and last night I decided, after exhortation from friends, to embrace it all and really no point in doing otherwise. As I had to get up in the middle of the night to go to Heathrow to collect Kathryn, not much point in going to bed, so watched the Opening Ceremony from beginning to end. I simply loved it. I was prepared not to, heard all sorts of rumours about its content etc and was beginning to wonder if it would be a disaster but we did it, we bloody did it, produced a simply stunning, off the wall, crazy and funny opening. It had moving moments of splendour which took your breath away and I thought it was quite wonderful.

I simply screamed with delighted disbelief when I saw Daniel Craig aka James Bond marching purposefully through Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen and there she was. Thought it would be a look alike or Dame Judi, but no it was Her Maj turning round, looking him up and down and saying 'Good Evening Mr Bond'. Twitter went ballistic with Tweets yelling with joy and quite a few along the lines of 'You rock Your Maj' and many many saying 'F*****g marvellous. Long live the Queen'. A total riot and how simply marvellous of her to do it.

THIS CLIP HAS NOW BEEN TAKEN DOWN FROM YOU TUBE AS THE OLYMPIC COMMITTEE ARE INVESTIGATING COPYRIGHT ISSUES.... shame

And then Mr Bean and a spoof of the wonderful Chariots of Fire sequence. What I loved about these two little gems in the middle of the spectacle was that it was so British. Like those choristers belting out Land of Hope and Glory on the top of a boat in the Jubilee Pageant, in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin with water dripping off their noses - only the Brits have that bloody minded attitude. We have all moaned and winged and complained and yet, against all the odds, last night was a triumph.

A Tory MP was mouthing off about it being left wing crap and he duly Tweeted about it and found himself in deep doo doo. I think MPs of all parties should be banned from using Twitter as they seem to think that anything they say on there is nothing to do with their job and nobody will notice. The tone of his Tweets were hardly surprising as this was a man who recently was demoted to the back benches for attending a party where all the guests were dressed up as Nazis and giving salutes all over the place. Not exactly a bleeding heart liberal then - just a rather stupid stupid stupid man who has been on the radio and TV today saying his Tweet had been 'misinterpreted'. Tosser.

The words eccentric and quirky have been used to describe Danny Boyle's vision. I prefer to say barking mad and lunatic at times but it WORKED and this morning Boris was on TV saying we knocked Beijing into a cocked hat. For once I agree with him.

Right I admit it - I am now into full Olympic mode - all the moaning is on hold - I am just going to enjoy the experience.

AND best of all, Kathryn is home. Currently asleep on my bed and I keep peeking in to look at her. Let Joy be unconfined!

I sometimes think I am barking. One of the hottest, if not the hottest, day of 2012 and for some reason which escapes me I start clearing out my kitchen drawers. Yes, I know - I don't know either. I had some wonderful marvellous clean silver pack from Waitrose and this involves putting said pack in sink, hurling all the family silver (in my case ancient cutlery) on top of it and cover with boiling water. Did this and then of course saw the state of the drawers I had just emptied and so it goes on. I now have a bowlful of shiny clean cutlery and need to spend ten mins or so buffing it up and drying it.

I have also put a cover back on a very old foam seat of an armchair which has clearly demonstrated to me that the foam needs replacing as it started to shred. OK so struggle with cover and that is back on and then I have to get the Hoover out to clear up the mess. Regular Random Readers know I hate getting the hoover out and will avoid it whenever possible, but in this case could not get away with it. So hoovered and cleaned and within ten minutes felt my back seizing up. For years I have used the excuse of the Bad Back to get out of hoovering, well now it is true and packed it in straight away. Have daughter arriving at Heathrow at 6am on Saturday and she wants to see me there upright and smiling and not doubled over like Quasimodo.

And of course this is the reason why I am going through my flat in a veritable whirlwind of housewifery. Kathryn will be staying with me on and off for the next fortnight and I want everything to look lovely and clean and nice, not that she will give a tinkers actually, but it makes me feel better. So magazines have been sorted and binned or put into nice tidy piles, I have dusted and swept, the kitchen floor is filthy but that can wait till tomorrow when I have staggered back from the Big Shop and that reminds me my fridge really needs a good clean, and then I will deal with floor. I will change my bed tomorrow as I am going to insist Kathryn sleeps in it on Saturday night and I will take the sofa bed. Apart from the fact that I will wake up before her, she will have spend some 24 hours in a cramped seat and I think she will enjoy spreading out in a comfy bed.

So all is now ready. She is here for just two weeks and we have a schedule pinned to the notice board so we know exactly what we are all doing, who is going where when and who is driving who where and when, and it is going to be a manic two weeks. Kathryn has very sensibly arranged to go to Ibiza for four days with her best friend in the middle of this time and I think she will need that before she returns to embark on the final round of visits. Of course, she is simply dying to see Florence - last time she saw her Florence was only 4 or 5 months old and I remember Kathryn holding her on her knee and sitting with silent tears dripping off her face as she realised she was leaving all this behind.

So folks, Random Jottings may be very Random over the next two weeks though I will pop in as often as I can. Huge amount of books still to write about and more arriving daily - twelve arrived yesterday, among them what looks like a superb biography of Marilyn Monroe. And I mean a proper biography, not the usual photos and gossip. It is fifty years since her death which is a lowering thought - I remember very well where I was when the news came through and the sense of shock we all felt. I am looking forward to reading this very much. Then How to Bake by Paul Hollywood (be still my beating heart) with fantastic recipes in which I shall try out and report back on, the latest Fay Weldon, a few thrillers and many more. I shall get round to them but it may be a while.

Hope to post tomorrow and then that will be that for a day or two as I shall be too busy sitting down yakking and yakking and laughing and crying with my beloved Kathryn who I simply cannot wait to see.

Falling behind with reviews - daughter arriving from Australia on Saturday and I am running around like a headless chicken planning menus, shopping, filling in schedule of who is going where and seeing whom while she is here, so I am doing a quick round up of my reading over the last week in one post. None of it has been particularly serious but it has nearly all been entertaining and enjoyable and whether the rain is raining or the sun is shining, and we have had both extremes this week, have managed to get through a few.

Since reading At Sea by Laurie Graham which I reviewed here just recently, I have picked up a few more from the library shelves and have enjoyed them in varying degrees. Some of them are obviously reissues of earlier books written back in the 90s and it is easy to see how her style of writing has become so much more assured since then. Perfect Meringues a story about a single mum with a sulky teenage daughter; mum appears in the cookery slot on a breakfast show; she has problems finding a new man and it is all rather light and frothy and charming. But then I struck gold with Mr Starlight, the story of a pair of brothers from the North of England who go into show business, starting in small clubs, playing on cruise ships and gradually working their way up to success. It is Selwyn the singer who is the one everyone wants to see and he makes it big in the US with his own show on TV, women swooning over him in his gold suits and glitter while his faithful brother works in the shadows. It was not until half way through that I realised that this is the story of Liberace, that totally camp and outrageous entertainer in a time when camp and outrageous and being gay was not so straightforward as it is today. I remember watching Liberace on TV introducing his mother onto the stage and talking about 'my wonderful brother George'. I went and sat in the garden this afternoon and did not come in until I had finished reading this witty, delightfully funny and wise book with a sad but optimistic ending. On a Laurie Graham roll I have also borrowed Gone with the Windsors which I read some time ago but now want to read again. This is an epistolary novel written from the view point of an American friend of Wallis Simpson and I am going to enjoy revisiting it.

A few months ago I discovered the Daniel Jacquot detective books of Martin O'Brien, my first read of which I reviewed here. Since then I have been hunting them down and in the last ten days have read two of them. First up Jacquot and the Fifteen. Daniel used to play rugby for France before an injury cut short his career and he is invited to a reunion of the Fifteen by their old Captain now an immensely wealthy business man married to a glamorous actress and who has kept in touch with all the team over the years, helping them out, investing in their businesses and generally behaving like a father figure to them all. It is is clear, however, that somebody resents and hates his team mates as a series of 'accidents' occur and the Fifteen start dying off. There is a suicide during the reunion but with Jacquot around he soon spots that this is not so and that it is murder. The local police chief is not interested in pursuing the investigation any further and so Daniel takes it upon himself to find out what is happening.

The second which I read straight after finishing the above title, is Blood Counts. The book starts with the death of two gangsters whose bodies have been sent back to Sicily where two sister do their macabre dressing and preparation of the bodies with hatred in their hearts. Back to Marseilles where Daniel attends a wedding of a young detective to a lovely country girl. He wakes up in the middle of their first night together to find his wife lying dead beside him shot through the head. A week or so later the well loved wife of a veteran policeman is smothered as she takes an afternoon nap. A young carpenter is murdered in a most gruesome manner - he has a policeman brother and Daniel soon realises that the loved ones of those police involved in a high profile case are being targeted, the murderers out for vengeance 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'.

Both books totally gripping and exciting and will keep you on the edge of your seat. I have another three to read and then am up to date and will have to await the next one in the series. I am reading them out of order, as I usually do, but though Daniel's personal life and relationships run through each book, they can be read as stand alone. I am simply loving them.

Then to round off the week, read a Michael Connelly, the Last Coyote in which Harry Bosch decides to finally open the unsolved case of the death of his mother and see if he can find the killer after a gap of some thirty years. As always, with this author, unputdownable and I have now more or less read all of Connelly's output and I sit here and wait the next one.....

Picked up Dancing Backwards by Sally Vickers in the library as it was set on a cruise ship and after reading At Sea by Laurie Graham thought I would give this one a whirl. Read it in about two hours and enjoyed it in a sort of 'well that passed the time' kind of way. A recently widowed Violet, a poet, decides to go on a cruise to New York to meet up with an old friend from Cambridge days. Along the way she meets assorted guests and we are told her life story in flashbacks. All rather Anita Brookenerish and by the time I came to the last page, I sat and wondered what the point of it all was. Not saying I thought it was badly written or anything like that, au contraire, Sally Vickers writes beautifully, but I had no interest in anybody I came across in its pages so not for me I am sorry to say. Interesting to read the reviews on Amazon.

Am now reading a Dick Francis, which of course isn't a Dick Francis as he has gone to the stable in the sky, but a Felix Francis but it is flogged under the old trade name which sells trillions and I am already thoroughly enjoying it. Will probably finish it before I go to bed.

So that is a quick gallop through my latest reads and it is now 9.30pm and starting to get dark. I have been sitting in the garden all evening and only came in an hour ago. All so peaceful and quiet with the heat of the day slowly subsiding and I never thought I would say that after the weather we have had in the last few weeks.

I gather that there were delays on the line I used to commute on when I worked in the City, with delays going through the Olympic Park - in some cases not stopping there at all - because it was 'too hot'. I kid you not. This is the kind of story you simply could not make up....

Bradley Wiggins first Brit to win the Tour de France - magnificent achievement and perhaps this is a good omen for the Olympics (yes I really did say that, I did). However, I have one Rant (yes I do I do). Would somebody please explain to me whose brilliant idea it was to wheel out Lesley bloody Garratt who is second only to Katherine bloody Jenkin when it comes to bursting in on a scene, dressed appallingly badly and sing appallingly badly where nobody wants you.

We have detectives in France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Spain, Italy and sure lots of other places I have never heard of and now we have a first, we have a detective set on the Rock of Gibraltar. At least I think it is a first, if somebody writes and tells otherwise then I will stand corrected.

Actually, the hero of our story Shadow of the Rock by Thomas Mogford is not a detective or a spy or anything like that, he is a lawyer and his name is Spike Sanguinetti. He is not even a criminal lawyer but deals in tax and other related matters but all that changes when he comes home one night to find an old friend, Solomon Hassan, lurking and on the run from a charge of murder. A Spanish girl has been found with her throat cut on a beach in Tangiers and Solomon was seen with her shortly before her death. He managed to elude the authorities but now they want him back and he has turned to Spike for help.

Spike sets off for Tangiers to try to delay Solomon's extradition and finds himself in a network of intrigue and danger. He meets a beautiful Bedouin girl, Zhara, who is investigating the disappearance of her father. It seems that she is following a trail which leads back to Solomon or, more importantly, the multi-national company for which he works.

Now you know if there is a multi-national company involved, they just HAVE to be the bad guys so don't think I am giving too much away here when I say if you assume this, you will not be wrong. Lots of murky double dealing going on and Spike finds himself in some pretty unsavoury company. He also finds himself in some pretty unsavoury surroundings as well: "The ground consisted of layer upon layer of trodden rubbish; flattened cans, shredded sackcloth, powdered glass. A stream snaked between the brick shacks. Its stench - eggs and rotten meat - suggested open sewers. The tall nuclear green reeds grew on one side only, giving Spike a glimpse of a brownish sludge oozing through the centre".

I have to say that after reading Shadow of the Rock it is highly unlikely that you will rush off to your local travel agent to book a holiday in Tangier as it sounds pretty ghastly there with corruption, both literally and figuratively, round every corner and in every shadow but have to admit it is heaving with atmosphere.

I am not going to attempt to give you the story line because not sure that I can as I found it very complicated. This is not a book you just put down and pick up casually, you really have to concentrate to work out what is going on and who is guilty of what. It repays your attention however, and we end up with a twist in the tail in the final chapter which, though I had suspected, still took me by surprise.

This is the first of what should be an interesting series in a fascinating setting. The Rock is an odd place, I visited it in my childhood, it is a spot of Britishness where you least expect it and this Britishness is mixed up with a mixture of other cultures which makes for a slightly skewed ambience. Of course, the Brits on the Rock hold stoutly to their identity whle the Spanish who feel the Rock belongs to them, hover around muttering and moaning and making life as difficult as possible for the Gibraltarians.

In this, the author's debut novel, we are introduced to Spike Sanguinetti, are given some background on his life and meet his father, suffering from some unnamed illness and now living with his son. We also meet his partner, Peter Galliano and the scene is set and the actors are on stage and given their lines. As the series progresses we will, no doubt, get to know them better and learn more of their relationship with each other and this is what I always enjoy about a long running series.

Shadow of the Rock is published by Bloomsbury on 2 August and I note another one of their authors, one William Boyd, has said that Mogford is a 'rare and enviable talent'. Well if William says so then who am I to argue.

Ok I may be a bit biased and willing to believe what Mr Boyd has to say as I met him earlier this year and rather gushed in a highly embarrassing way all over his jumper, but I also concur with his opinion and thought this was a very well written and sharp edged piece of writing. As I said, not easy, you do have to keep the little grey cells on the qui vive but worth it in the end.

I am trying to think of other places where we have yet to have a detective/crime thriller set - Cyprus or Malta or Madeira, maybe or how about somewhere nearer home, say, the Isle of Wight? That might be fun - we could have a title such as Murder at Osborne House or Death on the Ferry to Cowes, the Body in Queen Victoria's Bath....sorry getting silly now.

Before I go into full Rant Mode, I want to make it quite clear that I am not ranting about the Games themselves. I am perfectly willing to believe that over the next two weeks there will be moments of excitement and joy when I will be jumping up and down, but these moments will not, in my opinion, make up for the sheer unremitting boredom of the relentless stream of gaffes, management speak, lies, empty rhetoric and crap we have had to take from all and sundry since the day we heard our bid had been successful. There seems to be a feeling that we should be all be joyful and grateful that this glorious honour has been bestowed upon us and anybody who feels otherwise is a kill joy.

Now we are a nation of moaners - we know we are, we take great pride in being as miserable as sin most of the time and nothing pleases us more to be able to say 'Well I told you it would be a fiasco' when something ghastly goes wrong. The problem is, that so often things DO go wrong and then not only is it annoying but downright embarassing.

The fiasco with the security and the fact that the gap has to be plugged with soldiers returning from an arduous and dangerous tour of duty in Afghanistan is entirely predictable, but it is shameful that these personnel have to be dragged away from their families because of the sheer bloody incompetence of a security firm which has form in this respect. Why didn't the Olympic committe just decide to use the armed forces in the first place? Not only would it have been cheaper but it would have been done properly with the expertise needed already in place. Sensible - ergo, the government of the day would not have considered it. And let us not forget that the Government of the day then was Labour who are now thoroughly enjoying being in Opposition so they can jump up and down in the House and say what a gang of incompetents the current Government are. Only consolation one can extract from all this is that if the Labour Government were still in power it would be even worse and we would still have Tone, Cherie and Gordon to contend with. So let us be thankful for small mercies.

No surprise that there is a threatened strike by taxi drivers, the immigration staff at Heathrow, nor the Tube drivers. I will not comment on these as they are ongoing and I gather some may be called off, but again entirely predictable. There is a shocked reaction that these proles should have the temerity to do this and that we should be proud of the Games coming and be eager to welcome visitors and showcase London and the country. Well if you treat the populace with contempt and ignore them as this and previous governments have done, then you cannot expect the man or woman in the street to be happy to help you out in your strutting on the world stage.

Just read this article below from the Spectator and see the draconian attitude of the Olympic Committee and seethe as I did.

I am not even putting an illustration of the Olympic Rings on this post - have no desire to have my collar felt by the Games Stasi.

Then remember that if you are one of the lucky few to actually have a ticket for an event, you will not be allowed to bring in any of your own food, you will have to purchase it in-house and, no doubt pay a fortune for it. If you don't have cash you will need a credit card and if it happens to be Mastercard or American Express or any other, well you are buggered as only VISA is accepted as they are one of the sponsors. I forsee a lot of very angry scenes over this and can only hope they take place in McDonalds and that a lot of hamburgers are slung about.

If you can manage to get into London by train, well done. I have no idea if any of the train companies are putting on any extra services, no doubt if they do the train drivers will have demanded quadruple pay before they agree to do so. If you choose to drive then good luck and don't forget to take sleeping bags and blankets with you as well as extra rations for when you are gridlocked in a traffic jam for hours. (I was stuck in such a jam this week and the Games have not started yet). And while you sit fuming and dying for a pee wave happily at the VIPS who zap past you in the Olympic Lanes. See there is Lord Coe, there is Tony Blair (yes he has suddenly appeared back on the scene smirking and smiling with the ghastly Ed Milliband), there is Call me Dave sitting next to Boris and assorted drones from our glorious members of Parliament who have now just closed up shop for their summer break. Won't be back now until September folks, we are off enjoying ourselves (Ken Clarke sitting knocking back pints of beer at the Test Match today. Looked exhausted from all his hard work....). Should you stray into one of these lanes you will be fined £150 though with the level of efficiency surrounding the administration of the Games, I would suggest you tell them your name is Mickey Mouse and you live at Buckingham Palace and you will probably get way with it. Travelling by Tube? Not even going to start on that.

Oh I could go on and on and on and I really hate sounding such a miserable old bag. I do, I really do but I feel that the entire Olympic behemoth has just rolled over everybody and the fat cats and the sponsors don't give a shit about anything else except making money and if you don't like it, well you can just piss off.

It is not the Games themselves that I loathe, it is the greed and venality and total disregard of anybody else's opinions by Lord Coe and his cohorts and all those other luminaries organising the whole shebang that makes me seethe.

The only reason I am looking forward to the next two weeks is that my daughter Kathryn is home from Australia on holiday and if ever there was a reason for a Gold Medal then this is it...

Borrowed this from the library last week, along with several other books. Not quite sure why I go to the library when I have about 100 books awaiting my attention at home, but I did and I do and when I picked this book by Laurie Graham off the shelf I knew I was in for a treat as I remember reading Gone with the Windsors by this author a few years ago and loving it.

At Sea is set on a cruise liner. Now I love stories set on board - romances, murders etc just like Strangers on a Train only in this case it is a ship. Premise is the same, our main protagonists are cooped up in one place surrounded by people they cannot escape from - secrets, death and mayhem are sure to arise. In this case it is a Secret.

Enid is married to Bernard, tall, handsome, elegantly dressed and charismatic. He is a lecturer on this particular cruise ship. They need the money otherwise he would not lower himself to do something so unbefitting his intellect and stature and he despises all the passengers: "Bernard was magnificent as ever. His hair was looking particularly leonine this morning and he wore his charcoal seersucker with a canary yellow bow tie. He gave them one of his masterly sweeps through history.............I'm afraid it was all over their heads. Bernard read to them from Tertullian and what did his first questioner ask? 'Where will be the best place to buy a leather jacket?'....

Frankie Gleeson is a fellow passenger blessed with a long memory and as soon as he claps eyes on Bernard he is positive he has met him before. In fact, he is sure that Bernard is his long lost childhood friend "You put me in so much mind of Willy - Willy Fink" Bernard cuts him dead and escapes as soon as he can, but Enid stays behind and discovers that this mysterious Willy not only has the same birthday as Bernard, but also has a mother called Serafina, as does Bernard. Enid soon realises that her husband is hiding his past and all is not as it should be - another fellow passenger who attended Princeton, as did Bernard, wants to have a chat with him to reminisce about old times but it seems that Bernard is not so enthusiastic.

This story is sheer delight and fun all the way. Enid gradually unravels the truth about her husband and realises what she has known all along though she has tried to hide it, that he is a snobbish pretentious bore who married her when he was at a loss what to do with his life when he is out of a job and with no home, and then has spent most of their married life impressing upon her how ignorant she is and what low tastes she has. Boy do I know how she feels.........

The wit and humour of Laurie Graham's writing is difficult to describe or to illustrate, it is an elusive thing but it had me grinning and chuckling all the way through. As the voyage progresses Enid begins to break out of her shell, she gets her hair done, buys new clothes and discovers the joys of sex. Their marriage will never be the same again. And then, on the last night of the voyage, during Gala Night Bernard goes missing. It seems he has fallen overboard, or perhaps committed suicide as by now nearly everyone knows he is a fake. Enid is a widow and has to face up to life without her husband.

Going to stop right there - you have to buy this book and read it for yourself. You will love it, I promise you and if you are going on holiday to get away from the Olympics or the rain or both, take this to the beach with you and enjoy. Better still, take it on a cruise.

Thought the title of this post might catch your attention, but it is not a ploy, am seriously writing about these subjects. I am currently watching Wallender, the Ken Branagh version. Now I have watched the Swedish series of the Mankell books and thought they were excellent. Kurt was melancholy yes, he had a bleak outlook on life yes, but he also seemed to have a sense of humour which is conspicuously lacking in this series. Last week Wallander had moved into a house with his lover and her son and the first thing they found was a dead body in the garden. Presumably turned up for the housewarming. Fairly clear by the end of the episode that the relationship was doomed. It seems they had been seeing each for some time and the break up came about pretty sharpish, but one assumes that when they had seen each before it was for dinner, the odd visit and outings and the full force of his misery had not been pointed in her direction. She twigged pretty quick that the Nordic gloom 24/7 was not for her and at the start of this week's eppy he is Alone Again.

Started off promisingly as in comes the actor who was Sarah Lund's partner in The Killing, the TV producer in Borgen (cannot spell his name) and in the first five minutes we were driven along The Bridge. I can only assume this was deliberate to remind all us Scandinavian groupies that we were back in familiar territory. I know this story and found it rather dour to read and rather confusing so not quite sure how they will deal with it. Lots of long shots of Kurt wandering around looking portentous and gloomy, lots of grey and washed out green and I can already feel a desire to lie down with a stiff drink coming over me.

So while I sit here and try not to get too introspective and to take my mind off the fact that really Kenneth Branagh has no lips, I am writing about The Muppets and their latest movie which I watched this afternoon. Kathryn had sent it as a gift from Oz with instructions I was to watch it and then pass it onto Helen and then Patrick (my ex). We all love the Muppets and when the children were small and we lived in our tiny flat in London, we would all sit down together at 7pm every Friday night to watch the Muppet Show, to groan at Fozzy Bear's awful jokes, wait for Miss Piggy to yell YAAAAH and handbag somebody, watch Animal on the drums, laugh at the Swedish Cook, and join in the chorus at the end of the show. The guest stars who appeared on the show were HUGE and I mean huge names, I remember Julie Andrews appearing, Pierce Brosnan, Rudolf Nureyev, Tony Bennett - the list was endless. It seemed a badge of honour to say you had appeared with the Muppets, sure they did not get paid much for it.

There was something rather innocent and joyful about them. They were a family, a dysfunctional one perhaps, but they all supported each other and the cosy, backstage atmosphere was so warming and delightful that it was a joy to step into their lives each week. We all loved Kermit, but the Swedish Cook was a particular favourite of mine and always used to make me laugh. So I found it touching that Kathryn should send me the DVD and tell me to watch it and pass it on. She said she laughed and cried while in the cinema - she went on her own as she did not think anybody else would appreciate her feelings as she watched and I, too, sat here this afternoon with the same reaction. The Muppets are long disbanded, nobody is interested in them any more and they learn that their old theatre is due to be demolished by the Villain of the piece who has discovered an oil well beneath the theatre. They all get together again to put on a special show to raise money to save it - wonderful moment when they track down Miss Piggy who is now the editor of Vogue in Paris, complete with Anna Wintour hairdo.

The movie is very much an homage to the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney Let's Put a Show on in the Barn genre, with lots of homespun philosophy and singing and dancing in the streets and, indeed, within such a routine up pops Mickey Rooney himself. It is all charming and delightful and sweet and when the show starts with that magical opening "It's time to start the music, It's time to light the lights" and all the Muppets come out and dance I felt nostalgia sweep over me and then something else - the remembrance of the family all being together, curled up in a huddle on the sofa, the girls in their pyjamas all clean and smelling of talcum powder after their bath, and that lovely feeling that all was right in the world.

I found myself laughing and clapping as all the characters performed their old routines. At the end feeling they had failed to raise the money to save their beloved theatre and leaving and finding the street full of cheering and applauding people waving banners We Love the Muppets and So Glad you are back, I am not ashamed to say that I had a huge lump in my throat and then tears trickling down my cheeks. For me the Muppets reminded me of happy times when the children were tiny, days that will never come again, though now of course I have Florence and another baby soon to cuddle, and I am so glad this film was made. It has proved hugely popular, I have yet to meet anybody who does not love the Muppets and have their own particular favourite and it is clear that everyone taking part was having a wonderful time and that the directors, the producers and all involved were loving every moment.

So many violent films are made these days, so much misery and unremitting bleakness and then along comes this one, so full of innocence, laughter and joy and it is totally and utterly heart warming. I loved every single minute.

And now back to our Ken, who is looking even more miserable this week if that is possible. He needs a Miss Piggy in his life....